Used to defend every character decision in the book club as the author's perfect vision

After that debate last month where someone pointed out that the protagonist in 'The River Road' kept making the same dumb choice for 40 pages straight and the author admitted in an interview it was just to hit a word count, I finally started calling out weak writing instead of making excuses for it, anyone else find it freeing to just say 'that was poorly written' out loud?

2 comments

2 Comments

wyatt5131mo ago

That River Road thing is a good example, but I think you're being a little generous to the author. The interview I saw mentioned the word count thing, but it also said the editor pushed for those extra pages to make the book fit a specific length for the paperback market. So it wasn't just the author being lazy, it was a whole business decision.

the_holly29d ago

Oh wow, I totally thought it was just padding but that actually makes a lot of sense now.